Chapter 25: Lydia’s Determination

The rain just wouldn’t let up. It poured with the kind of stubborn persistence that made you wonder if the skies were trying to drown the world. Sheets of water blurred the edges of the ruined churchyard, drumming against stone and sodden soil alike. There was no sign of it stopping soon. And yet, in spite of it all, Lydia kept digging.

Still in her dampened habit, she wrestled with the weight of the shovel and the resistance of the rain-soaked earth. Each breath came harsher than the last, labored from effort and cold, but she didn’t stop. She grunted softly as she brought the blade down and heaved up another mound of mud. Five graves. That was what she set out to dig.

I walked nearby, watching her struggle, the rain sluicing through her hair and running down her sleeves. I eventually said, “You can just let me possess you, you know. I could do the digging for you, faster and more efficient. But you’ll need to leave the cross behind.”

She didn’t even glance at me as she answered, her tone clipped but steady. “I want to prove myself to you. That’s why I’m working this hard right now.”

I let out a half-laugh, not mocking exactly, but not quite amused either. “And it’s not because you’re worried I might do something to your body.”

She finally paused. Water rolled down her cheeks and she huffed out a breath. “You’re right. This habit is such a hindrance…”

She stepped back under the half-rotten awning that barely provided cover. With practiced fingers, she slipped off the soaked garment, folding it and setting it aside. She stood in her underclothes now, clinging wetly to her skin, outlining every line and curve. She didn’t flinch or shy away. With one quick motion, she tied her golden hair into a high, no-nonsense bun and returned to her work like nothing had changed.

I raised a brow. “Is this really wise? Digging graves in a heavy rain like this?”

She answered through grit teeth, not stopping even as she drove the shovel into the earth again. “It’s better this way. Most people will stay home. No one’s going to come snooping in this weather. The fog, the downpour… it hides everything. This is the perfect time to clean up.”

She might’ve had a point. Or maybe she’d get unlucky and a bolt of lightning would finish the job for her. Coming from me, that was a little twisted. I didn’t say it out loud.

Lydia kept at it, unfazed. Rain soaked her through, dirt streaked across her arms and legs, but she moved with purpose. There was something fierce about the way she dug, gritty and determined. She didn’t complain. She didn’t ask for help. She just kept going until all five graves were carved out of the sodden earth.

“You should go keep Nira company,” she said between breaths, brushing back a strand of hair that had come loose from her bun. “She’s still resting in my quarters, right?”

I shook my head. “I’d rather be here with you.”

When the holes were deep enough, she dragged each of the fallen one by one, careful with their limbs. Their weapons and belongings followed, piled into the grave with them. She moved their corpses alone, her muscles flexing with effort. She even cast a soft spell on herself, her skin began to glow faintly, like moonlight through fog. At first, I thought it was just a trick of the rain. But no. She was truly glowing, suffused with quiet magic.

“What’s that about?”

“White magic on myself,” explained Lydia with steady breathing, “To replenish stamina.”

When the last body was laid to rest, Lydia knelt in the mud, both hands pressed together. She bowed her head, the glow from her still shining faintly against the darkened rain. Her voice, when it came, was too soft for the thunder to hear, but not too soft for me.

“May the gods guide your souls to peace. May you find the mercy in death that life never offered. May the world forget your crimes, but not your names.”

And then she fell silent, letting the rain say the rest.

Soon, she was back inside the church.

Lydia’s underclothes clung to her frame, damp from the storm and sweat, and though she moved with calm efficiency, her shoulders had begun to tremble ever so slightly from the cold. Still, she pressed on. I watched as she scrubbed at the bloodstains smeared across the stone floor of the church, dragging a wet cloth across dark patches and smearing them into pinkish swirls.

A crusted piece of gore slid free from between the pews and slapped into the rag. Lydia wrung it out into a bucket that was already streaked with the same diluted red. She didn’t flinch. Not once.

I hovered nearby and remarked, “Is there any way I could offer a… hand?”

Without looking up, she answered, “No, I can handle this.”

I tilted my head. “Aren’t you cold?”

“It’s just cleaning. I’ll be fine.”

I didn’t think so. Her fingers looked stiff, her breath shallow, and I’d seen how she’d struggled earlier dragging the bodies around on her own. She wasn’t some unstoppable force, just a very determined one.

Still scrubbing, she said, “I guess we can talk. Get to know more about each other.”

I drifted over to the wall and leaned against it, startled when I felt the texture of the stone. It wasn’t like before. There was a kind of resistance to it now. My senses had grown sharper too. Maybe I was starting to root into this world more than I realized.

“I used to write for a tabloid,” I said.

That made her pause. She looked up at me, one brow raised. “Write? So, you… are a novelist?”

I laughed. It echoed a little too hollow in the bloodstained chapel. “Hardly, but I guess that kind of fits. Novelists write from imagination… to entertain, amuse, or show off their creativity. I wrote to lie and deceive. Well… half the time. Or maybe less than that. I’d like to think so.”

She blinked, not following. “I don’t understand. You have to be more elaborate than that.”

I stepped closer, watching as she dipped her rag into the water and scrubbed harder. “It’s a kind of job where you write stories, usually about people in the public eye. Celebrities, politicians, influencers. Sometimes the stories are real from actual scandals and big newsworthy stuff. But most of the time, it’s just vague rumors, tiny things blown out of proportion. You’d take a blurry picture of someone leaving a bar, and suddenly, it becomes a story about cheating, drugs, or secret affairs. That’s the job. You gather whispers and turn them into headlines.”

Lydia’s expression grew strangely serious. “So… something like the Thieves’ Guild?”

I stared at her. “What?”

She nodded. “It’s an unofficial organization, operating in the underworld. They trade in information, selling it, auctioning it, using it for leverage. They’re criminals, of course. Smugglers, fences, spies… They offer their services to those who can pay, and sometimes even to those who can’t, if there’s something interesting in return. Information is currency to them.”

“…That’s not exactly what I meant,” I muttered. “But I guess, from your perspective, it’s not far off.”

She looked smug, as if she'd cracked a riddle. “You’re part of the information underworld from where you came from. A Thieves’ Guild of lies.”

I couldn’t help but grin. “That’s a hell of a stretch. But maybe. I mean, now that I’m dead, I guess I can own up to it.”

Lydia chuckled, soft and tired. She scrubbed one last patch near the altar, then wrung the rag into the last bucket of now-murky water. Her arms had stopped shaking, but only because she was numb. She stood, lifting the bucket with both hands and sloshing the contents out the front steps, letting the rain take the rest.

“You sure know a lot about the world, huh?” I said, as she came back in and surveyed her work. “And here I am… so ignorant of many things.”

“I listen,” she said simply. “I had to learn fast. When you don’t know who to trust, knowledge becomes your only defense.”

The floor still bore the faintest tinge of red in the cracks, but she’d done it. She’d wiped away the mess I’d left behind. With only a few buckets of water, raw willpower, and skin like ice, she had made the church look whole again.

She sighed and sat on the edge of a pew, hair dripping, body spent.

And still, she didn’t complain.

Her legs curled sideways onto the seat like a cat that had finally found a dry spot to rest in this storm-soaked ruin. Her underclothes were still clinging to her, damp from sweat and rain, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her expression had softened, more relaxed now that the blood and gore were no longer streaking the chapel floor. She sat there as if the exhaustion couldn’t touch her, though I suspected it already had.

“So?” she said, resting her chin in her palm. “Any questions for me?”

I didn’t hesitate. “How did you become a nun?”

She smiled, but it was faint and full of memory. “After I survived the witch hunters chasing me, I was taken in by an orphanage. It wasn’t a kind place, but it gave me shelter. I learned white magic there, and before long, the sisters noticed my talent. I was inducted into the cleric order not long after. One day I was a frightened child cleaning floors, the next I was being taught to heal wounds and banish spirits. And before I knew it… I had become a full-fledged cleric of the cloth.”

She paused and glanced at the wall across from her, where faint candle soot stained the stone in the shape of forgotten icons.

“The truth is,” she continued, “I fell through the cracks. It’s not rare for witchspawns. I was reckless, dangerous, even, for hiding in the one place I shouldn’t have been. There’s no one who hates witches more than the orthodox churches, and the Church of the Silver Promise is no exception. But I was just a little girl with a bit of talent. That’s all they saw.”

“You were a witchspawn… hiding among the clergy… Without context, it doesn’t sound so hard when you say it.”

She nodded, not a hint of pride in her voice. “I hid what I was in my youth. Fooled them all. And it was all thanks to this—”

She vanished.

I didn’t blink. One moment she was sitting there, and the next she was standing by the broken altar a few paces away. No wind, no shimmer of magic. Just gone and reappeared.

“My unlimited magic,” she said, “lets me distort perception. I can fool most senses. Vision, sound, even presence.”

That sent a chill down my spine, even as I tried to keep my tone casual. “What exactly… qualifies someone to be a witch?”

“There are three things,” Lydia said. “First, they must be a woman of age. Second, they must be capable of wielding unlimited magic. And third, this.”

She slipped her fingers beneath the strap of her underclothes and tugged it aside, just enough to reveal a mark on her chest. A crescent moon, pale against her skin, like it had been etched there by the night sky itself.

“The witchmark,” she said. “Each witch has one, but they only manifest in adulthood. They differ in shape and placement, but they always appear. No one knows why, and not even us. The churches, of course, don’t bother to study us. They only want us gone.”

I watched the mark disappear beneath the cloth again and asked, “What exactly is unlimited magic?”

“It’s an umbrella term,” Lydia explained, returning to the pew. “Unlimited magic refers to spells that we witches can cast instinctively, without formula or cost. It's not the same for every witch. Mine, for example, leans toward perception, illusion, and movement. For others, it might be fire, rot, shadow… It’s bloodline magic, tied to the essence of who we are, except… unlimited…”

I frowned. “Honestly, I don’t get it. Maybe I’m naive, but I figured someone out there must like witches, right? I mean, what are the chances?”

Lydia shook her head slowly. “You’re not naive. Just… kind. But magic always has a cost. Pyromancy burns your body’s heat. Cryomancy drains your warmth until you shiver. Phantomancy takes the light in your eyes. Others demand blood, time, and memory. But unlimited magic costs nothing. That makes witches powerful. Too powerful for the comfort of those who want to stay on top.”

“And when you use white magic?” I asked.

She looked at me without flinching. “My life force.”

The silence that followed was heavy. I hadn’t expected that answer. I didn’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that.

She watched me closely. “You look surprised. Don’t worry. I’m not going to drop dead in front of you. There are ways to recover what’s lost. Traditional casters meditate. Perform rituals. As a faith caster, I pray. That’s my method. But it still hurts. It still takes.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

She glanced toward the door, where the last of the rain had begun to ease into mist. “That it?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s it.”

She stood with a stretch, her bones cracking faintly beneath her damp sleeves. “Good. I need a bath.”

And with that, she walked off, leaving me alone.